The Danish chair of the UN talks on climate change, Connie Hedegaard, today stepped down and was replaced by Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
Hedegaard’s removal is possibly tied to the fact that a second Danish draft is expected to be made public, unlike the first version, which was circulated behind closed doors to select countries.
The official reason given for the change, however, was that with 115 heads of state and government expected for the final day of negotiations on Friday, Rasmussen was a more “appropriate” chair.
There has been speculation that the decision was a tactical move in the wake of Hedegaard having emerged as a divisive figure. She has repeatedly been criticised by the African group for favouring rich nations in the negotiations and is seen as the architect of the notorious Danish accord, an unofficial draft text that sought to do away with the differential responsibilities ascribed to the developing and developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol.
Minister for environment Jairam Ramesh told Business Standard that “the Danish draft part-II is supposed to be an amalgamation of the two texts”, which have thus far been under consideration, one on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the other on long-term cooperative action (LCA). “We have been promised by the Danish chair that it will share this draft today, but promises have been broken in the past,” he said.
Although the new Danish draft claims to be a distillation of the points of consensus that the two-track process has thus far yielded, negotiations are stalled on virtually every major issue. Jairam Ramesh said, “Frankly, there has been no progress. This has turned into a Nato exercise, no action, only talk.”
The minister indicated that it was increasingly unlikely the blanks in the draft under negotiation would be filled in, in time to present to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he arrived in the Danish capital on Thursday night.
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Although Ramesh has in the past said that it was not an option to serve up a “half baked document” to Singh given that a Prime Minister “does not negotiate,” he acknowledged that it now “looks inevitable” this would be the case.
For India, this is a major climb down that plays into the hands of the developed nations, since a political solution devised at the heads of state and government level is something they have been openly pushing for. “I think this has been their (developed countries) game plan from day one,” Jairam Ramesh said.
Although Manmohan Singh has confirmed his participation for the high-level meeting of world leaders on Friday morning, he will miss the gala dinner being hosted by the Danish government on Thursday night. Sources in the Indian delegation said this decision was the result of a deliberate strategy to avoid putting the PM in an awkward position.
It is widely expected that pressure will be brought to bear on world leaders to ignore the sticking points that have confounded negotiators and to commit to an “ambitious” deal on climate.
The points of contention include the issue of how much developed countries should cut their emissions by. The US has stalled talks on the LCA by seeking to remove mention of a target range of emissions reductions of between 25 and 40 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, and to insert “or 2005” after 1990, moving the base year up.
The US is also insisting on stringent international monitoring and verification of voluntary domestic mitigation actions taken by large emerging economies, in particular China. The move has been categorically rejected by China in common with India and other developing countries. China reacted angrily to the idea of single Danish draft separate from the two UN texts, its chief negotiator Su Wei saying, “this is a party-driven process, you can’t just put forward a text from the sky.”
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) on Wednesday reiterated its belief that the Kyoto Protocol was not enough to curb climate change and an agreement that was legally binding for all was needed.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, speaking on behalf of the EU, said the Union wanted a comprehensive agreement building on all essentials of the Kyoto Protocol.
“The Kyoto Protocol alone covers less than a third of global emissions and will not be enough to win the battle against climate change,” he said.
He blamed the US and China for the deadlock in ongoing climate negotiations, saying that unless the US accepted legally binding emissions cuts and China agreed to “binding actions”, there could be no movement forward.
Jairam Ramesh said the Kyoto Protocol if not dead yet, was certainly in the intensive care unit and it desperately needed a cylinder of oxygen in form of some US flexibility. He held bilateral meetings with senator John Kerry and World Bank chief Robert Zoellick in the afternoon.
India also spent considerable time coordinating with BASIC countries for a united response to the Danish text, but worries remained that cracks in the unity of positions between BASIC countries and the African group might weaken the former’s position.
European leaders have been actively courting African nations to this end, reluctant to have China and India speak as leaders of the developing world.
Given that the AOSIS countries have already broken with the BASIC stance, the position of the African group will be crucial as talks near crunch time.
Britain and France are now backing a proposal by Ethiopia intended to break the deadlock over financing for poor countries’ mitigation and adaptation efforts by suggesting funds be raised through levies on international aviation and shipping, and possibly even a controversial global financial tax.
The one issue on which there has been some progress is a potential agreement on preserving the world’s forests called REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation). It envisages a system under which poor countries are paid for conserving disappearing natural assets like forests, based on their contribution to reducing emissions.
REDD also provides for carbon credits that rich countries can use to cancel out, in part, their industrial emissions under a carbon trading system, similar to the cap-and-trade concept.
Jairam Ramesh said that while he was largely on board with the agreement, forests had to be part of total package, underscoring how even a matter on which there is relative agreement can still be undermined by the failure to reach an overarching agreement.